How Can You Lose a Big, Red Nose?
by Piccylo
Summary: A one shot on how Buggy found out what his devil fruit abilities were. Strange on how connected it was with his touchy attitude towards his signature red nose.


Disclaimer: Don't own One Piece, don't know Oda, don't have connections in Toei Studios, Shonen Jump, or 4Kids. Warning: Language and alcohol consumption.

I got this idea from looking around my dorm room for a clown nose that I got at a party. Extra note: I got a pirate eyepatch and a pair of deleebopper-things (Skypiea!) at the same party.  
By the way, this is a **ONE SHOT**. At least it isn't as long as my other One Piece one shot, though (this one's 2,000 words long; "Jaded Lullaby" is 16,000!).

* * *

Buggy was pissed. Really pissed. He was one of the best damn swimmers on the ship, and he was always so proud of that. Part of it was because he could hold his breath for so long (which the rest of the crew would always somehow attribute to his nose, saying that it held more air, or that it could absorb oxygen through the water like gills, or some other nonsensical theory the guys garble out). He was now a hammer in the water. _A hammer!_ Add onto that, when he jumped into the water after his map and nearly drowned, _Shanks_, of all people, dove in to save him. 

It was all Shanks' fault! If he hadn't have come up right behind him and scared him, he wouldn't have swallowed that fruit! Now he was so angry at Shanks, he wouldn't even acknowledge his presence. It wasn't something as trivial as whether the North Pole or the South Pole was colder. Hell no, this goes deeper than that. Stupid, straw-hat-wearing, red-haired idiot!

He got off that ship the next time that they came to port, swearing that he'll get his own pirate ship that will one day contain all the treasures on land. The rest of crew shrugged in confusion to Buggy's new animosity. He didn't explain his anger to any of them, but they decided not to go out of their way to stop him. It was his choice to leave, after all.

Even long after the ship left the dock and him behind, his anger didn't subside. So he decided that the best course of action to rectify this was… alcohol. He was usually a happy drunk, so knocking back some liquor could pacify some of his seething rage. At least, that's what he thought.

Buggy quickly took a seat in a bar and ordered a bottle of sake, telling the bartender to not even bother with a cup. A moment later he regretted the choice, thinking that beer would probably be easier on his pocket, but he decided to just drink his bottle and drink some beer after that if he wasn't satisfied. He never mixed beer and sake before, but he was still a rather young lad and didn't think it would have much in the way of consequences.

One sake bottle and about 6 or 7 pints later, his sore temper only seemed to rise as the weight of his situation bore more and more onto his brain. He had himself abandoned by his crew, he can't swim, he lost his very first treasure map, and he had no means of building himself up from this point. His money from the work on the ship didn't yield him enough to live on for too long. All because he ate that stupid fruit! He didn't even know what powers that thing was supposed to give him!

And despite his visible irritation, someone in the bar decided that it'd be fun to joke on the one physical feature that Buggy was most self-conscious about. "Hey, are you trying to be some sort of clown with that big, red nose of yours?"

Buggy's eyebrow twitched and he glared daggers at the drunkard that decided to speak to him like that. "What are you trying to say, you fat bastard?"

The large drunkard laughed and pointed at the prominent feature on Buggy's face with his stubby hand. "I'm saying that your fake nose is gaudy as Hell. What? You wanna fight over your bad style in clothing?"

"**_WHOSE NOSE IS FAKE!_**" Buggy immediately jumped up onto the table and pulled out his daggers, staring down at the man who dared to speak to him in such a way. Of course, now that Buggy brought out his weapons, he had every intention of using them, and even if he was only a pirate trainee when he left the ship, it didn't make him any the less capable of fighting. He wasted the prick and left the bar with a bottle of sake in each hand, still fuming.

As he went down the road, looking for a place to crash for the night, he guzzled down the contents of one of the bottles and continued to brood over his situation. Everyone has had their own troubles, but life just seemed to throw him more curveballs than the average person. Sure, a lot of what's been happening lately he brought onto himself, but if there was one thing he wasn't responsible for, it was his nose. He just had the bad luck of getting born with a big, red nose that looked like one of those rubber props that clowns would wear at parties.

He had already finished one bottle before he found a hotel that he could afford. After he checked in, he sat on his bed and started on the second bottle. Between swigs, he looked over at his reflection in a small mirror mounted onto the wall. As usual, his nose was the first thing he noticed, and he growled. All of his life, he'd been heckled and made fun of because of that nose. No one would accept him seriously, he was frequently teased, and he was always very violent and temperamental since he was a kid as a result. One might even attribute his nose to being the reason he wanted to be a pirate in the first place, since he felt that he couldn't possibly have a place in society.

Being pissed angry and pissed drunk at the same time, especially when you've been going through a lot and are rather young, tends to drive people to make stupid and crazy choices. But he knew that a lot of problems in his life had to do with that damn nose, and all at once, that nose became his enemy.

"I might have not been able to do anything about getting this nose," he declared aloud, "but I sure as Hell can do something about getting rid of it!" With this, he pulled out one of his daggers and lopped the thing clear off his face. It didn't hurt a bit. He gritted his teeth and threw the cursed thing out the window with as strong an arm as a drunken man could manage.

He pondered briefly on why he didn't feel a thing, and why blood wasn't spurting all over the room from his face, but the point where a man is inebriated enough to think lopping off a part of his anatomy is a good idea also tends to be the point where he passes out. He didn't get up until after noon the next day.

When he left his room and went back into town, he eventually noticed over his hangover that something was amiss. Buggy was used to people trying to avoid looking at him, but today seemed a lot worse in that aspect. And weirder still, where people would normally be hiding their snicker, they would now suddenly get a gloomy air as soon as they saw him.

The barmaid from the tavern he went to the night before ended up being one of these people. He knocked into her by accident, and as soon as she saw him, her face went pale.

He wasn't any more in the mood for someone to be acting this way now than he was the night before. "What is it, wench? Do you think I look funny with a big, red nose?"

She shook her head. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't know that you wore that rubber nose to hide that. I didn't mean to stare."

"**_RUBBER NOSE!_**" He was about to give her a piece of his mind, but another part of her sentence rung in his mind. "Wait, hide what?"

"I wasn't aware that you didn't have a nose underneath it. I'm really sorry for bringing it up, since you're obviously really sensitive about it. I won't ask how it happened."

He still looked at her, confused, but his hand went up to his face and touched where his nose was supposed to be, finding that his fingers touched a lot closer to the rest of his face than it normally did. It finally dawned on him, and he covered his face with both hands. "Ahh! My nose! My nose is gone!"

Buggy sprinted immediately back to the hotel and ran into his room, practically tearing up the place looking for it. "Where is it! Where is it!" All he could remember is that he had a damn nose on his face _yesterday_, and although he couldn't figure out how a nose could just suddenly disappear, he figured that his room would have to be the first place to look.

When he came up with nothing, he remembered what happened the night before, when he cut off his nose himself and threw it out the window. He would have thought it as nothing more than a dream, but since he was now without a snout of any kind, he had his second thoughts. This time, he considered seriously the lack of blood and pain in the process. "Maybe," he thought aloud, "it's because I ate that devil fruit. It's supposed to give me special powers… maybe I can't bleed or feel pain because of it."

As if to disprove that last part of his theory immediately, he felt a stinging pain, and he covered the spot where his nose should have been by reflex as his eyes teared up. It felt like something had bitten into… his nose. He blinked a few times as he realized this, wondering why a dismembered appendage could still give sensation. The thought crossed his mind that it could be phantom pains, but he found just as quickly that he could also _smell_ something. He wasn't quite sure, but it seemed like he could have been smelling dog breath.

Buggy ran out just as suddenly as he ran in and went into the general direction that he remembered throwing the thing. He eventually came up to a lumberyard, where he would be faced with a big black dog… with what looked like a red ball in its mouth.

The former cabin boy sneered at the mongrel, and it growled at him in turn.

"Give it to me, dog!" He snarled, but it only growled some more and started to run away, forcing Buggy to give chase. "Hey! Stop! Come back here with my nose!"

The hunt went on for almost an hour, with Buggy sprinting after the lumberyard dog up and down stacks of cut timber and empty flatbeds. He found himself really, _really_ wanting that dog dragged back to him so he can beat the thing senseless and take back what was his. With this thought, the dog was suddenly pulled into the air and brought before him, hovering with its muzzle pointed upwards like it was dangling off his nose.

The sight surprised Buggy, and the dog just as soon let go of the orb, leaving it to stand in the air while it ran off to hide from this strange power. But Buggy stared at the sight for several minutes before he could think to do anything else.

"What is this? Is this the power of the devil fruit?" He said aloud, poking at the floating ball and marveling at the sight while feeling every poke he made. He willed it to return to its proper place, and it did so, flying up to his face and reattaching itself. He brought his hand up and wiggled it, as if to make sure that it was on firmly.

He lowered his hands and looked up to the sky. "What kinds of powers was I given? Can I do this with any part of my body?"

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

Many years later, Buggy the Clown chuckled, looking over the great treasure of gold and jewels he so recently obtained. His crew all cheered, and a party was in order to celebrate the amount of loot they got from their pillaging.

The men ran around and crashed mugs full of whatever alcohol you could imagine together. Through this merriment, one of the men spoke up. "Hey, Captain! How about you tell us how you got your powers and learned to use them? I'm sure it'd be a funny story!"

"Funny?" Buggy narrowed his eyes and set his teeth. "**_WHOSE NOSE LOOKS FUNNY!_**"

"…Ah! Boss, that's not what I meant!"

"**_BARA BARA CANNON!_**"


End file.
